Blood of My Blood
by AllHailTheGeek
Summary: Dead Ringer manages to defeat Cadence- and then has his curse lifted. He feels himself again, but a fat lot of good that's doing him when he can't go back and the only way forward is blocked by one final not-a-boss, one he can't bring himself to kill... Rated T for violence and a little bit of graphic imagery.
1. Descent

**Disclaimer: I do not own Crypt of the NecroDancer. I mean, I have my own copy, but I don't own the game. Also, all the spoilers for the Cadence storyline, so I suggest you run like a pursued goblin if you don't want those!**

Dead Ringer awoke with a start. There was that one beat of disorientation, when the ringing in his brain wasn't quite so strong and he could almost _remember,_ but then the ringing was back full force and there was nothing but the command. Today the enemy was not some lucky wild animal wandered in from above: it was an adventurer. He studied her through his crack: blonde hair, slightly shorter than him, wearing heavy metal armor and a blue bandanna, wielding a rapier whose crimson blade glimmered with magic. Some little part of him thought he might recognize her, but the ringing didn't give him time to dwell on it. Dead Ringer attacked.

She was good, he had to give her that. Of course she was- she'd survived this far, hadn't she? As he watched, she took down the dragon he'd summoned first in only two hits, then rang another bell, probably to see what it would do, judging by her fleeting expression of curiosity.

That was her first mistake. The ogre nearly smashed her flat. And after that, things didn't run quite so smoothly for her anymore. She was getting scared, sloppy, making mistakes. She misjudged a lunge, sending herself straight into a nightmare's hooves. By the time all four bells were spent and it was time for Dead Ringer to deal with her himself, her armor was battered and broken in places, several of which oozed blood. She was in bad shape.

The tiny part of Dead Ringer that recognized her screamed at him to stop, but he could hardly hear it over the ringing. The command was too powerful. He readied his hammer for the final charge.

It caught her in the chest, snapping her rapier like a twig and sending her sprawling into the wall. She slid down it, leaving a smear of scarlet, and was still.

Dead Ringer lowered his hammer and allowed himself a sigh of relief. His job was done. Any beat now he would feel the ringing command him back to sleep, ready for the next time some fool managed to penetrate this far into the crypt.

But it didn't. Instead it grew louder, louder every beat until his head felt like it was about to explode, and yet there was no command. Dead Ringer waited, in silent agony, as the ringing built to a thundering climax, until he could not help but scream-

The scream was what did it. With the loudest noise he had ever heard in his life, the bellhead split. Dorian screamed until he had no breath left to scream with, feeling his very eyes vibrating in their sockets, and then passed clean out on the floor.

When Dorian came to, he had a fog in his head worse than the worst hangover he'd ever gotten (a couple mornings after Melody died). He counted beats, focusing on his breath - _in-two-three-four, out-two-three-four_ \- until he felt some semblance of better. His warrior's instincts told him he was alone, not about to be attacked, so he took his time sitting up, feeling almost every muscle in his body complain at the movement.

When he opened his eyes, it was to a fairly gruesome sight: a wall splattered with blood, blood that was clearly human. Nothing else down here had blood quite that color, that shade of bright, vital red.

...Wait a second. What was "down here"? Why were there beats to count? His memories of the time before the ringing were in pieces, refusing to put themselves in any coherent order. His memories of the time during the ringing were almost nonexistent. Except for the final fight, the one with the young female adventurer he thought he might know from somewhere. Dorian thought back to the glimpses he'd gotten through the crack in the bellhead, when, just for a moment, he had seen her face…

 _Cadence._

The face had a name, and the name had a history, and the history was his as well as hers. Suddenly the memories clicked: being a child and pretending a stump was a dragon and a stick his mighty sword, being a teenager and learning that mighty swords were tougher to use than he'd thought, being a young man and meeting Melody at the bards' festival- _Melody._ That name had a face and a history too. The auburn hair, the laughing green eyes - _Cadence's eyes_ \- the way she sang, the way she smiled, the way she had carried and borne and helped him raise their daughter. Their daughter. _His_ daughter. Cadence.

And she was dead.

For a moment, Dorian couldn't quite comprehend it. When he'd left in search of the Golden Lute, Cadence had still been a girl- a girl on the cusp of womanhood, true, but a girl all the same. This couldn't be the same person. It couldn't. He couldn't have killed her. That wasn't the way this was supposed to be.

But there was the blood on the wall, and the last traces of ringing in his head, and the broken hilt of a rapier lying on the ground.

Dorian didn't know how long he knelt there, staring at the remains of his last and greatest mistake. Afterward it was a haze in his memory: he might have cried, he might have just sat there with his heart like a dead weight in his chest, he might have prayed to any deity that might happen to exist to please, please let him do it over again, let him never have gone to search for the thing or at least let him have lost the fight, but nothing he did changed anything. Cadence was dead. Melody was dead. Was Dorian himself dead? He wasn't quite sure. In any case, dead or not dead or something else again, he was powerless.

And then he thought, _the staircase._

There was a staircase at the end of his room, leading down further into the crypt. Hopefully, if the situation got too bad, he'd be able to get back up it again. If there was any chance at all that Cadence had been reanimated somehow, he had to take it. Dorian hefted his- no, _Dead Ringer's_ hammer - why did it seem so much heavier now? - and descended, feeling the beat return as he did.

The room at the bottom was small, with only a single sarcophagus that Dorian made short work of. He'd been expecting something more, and he wasn't disappointed: as soon as he took out the last of the skeletons, a voice shouted, _"Who's there?!"_

A female voice. A hauntingly familiar one.

"Cadence?" Dorian called into the disco-lighted dark, hardly daring to hope.

She shambled into his field of vision from the far end of the room, looking a mess: her armor was gone, revealing several scabbed-over gashes in her ever-present tunic and tabard. Her hair was matted, her bandanna askew, her skin covered in the same purple splotches that Dorian's was, that Melody's had been before she died. Her eyes were the worst part, though. Instead of Melody's green, they were pits of glowing violet, with no white or pupil.

It looked for all the world like a single hit would kill her.

"Cadence…" Dorian said again, uncertain now.

She didn't respond, just took another step closer, then another. Every other beat. And then, when she was close enough, she swung at Dorian with a scratched-up old dagger.

It was a pathetic strike, really. Dorian sidestepped with ease and brought his hammer up in a defensive position. "Cadence, honey, it's me, it's your father, please, listen…" he begged, but she didn't seem to hear. She just came at him again and attacked, a weak and horribly predictable slash that Dorian caught on his hammer shaft. She swung for a third time. Again, Dorian dodged, then leapt to the far side of the room with his boots, giving himself a little space to think.

Killing Cadence, even in this broken, cursed state, was out of the question. So was leaving the crypt: he'd entered it by falling through the ground and nearly splitting his head open, so no getting back up that way. And the stairs on the other end were locked up tight. He would have to defeat her somehow to go onward.

And yet. Everything had a trick to it, but nothing had a trick where you could defeat, but not kill. Even if they did, he doubted he could have figured it out; he was an old adventurer, strong with hammer and sword but little else. If he couldn't kill her, and he couldn't defeat her without killing her...what now?

What now?

Dorian was so preoccupied with this terrifying question that he nearly forgot about Cadence. Only a reflexive flinch saved his exposed upper arm from her dagger. He leapt away again. She followed, but slowly, so slowly. He'd met slimes more dangerous than this.

"Oh, Cadence…" Dorian moaned, his voice no louder than a whisper.

He looked up at the ceiling, and was surprised to find a square hole where the exit stairs from Dead Ringer's old room had been. He tossed his hammer through it; it clattered against stone and didn't fall back down again. Good. It took him a couple tries, but with the help of his boots he managed to get his arms through the opening and haul the rest of himself up as well. Dorian sat, panting, on the stairs, as from below Cadence screamed in rage, a sound somewhere between a banshee screech and Melody yelling at him when she was really mad.

 _Melody._ He was stuck, and now he was stuck without her. All the ten years of planning and exploration, that final awful charge into the crypt, it had all been for naught. He could not kill his daughter, not again. But if he didn't, his wife would stay dead forever.

What now? What now, indeed?

He supposed he'd have to live down here. Eat the food he'd left lying around the crypt, or buy some off that opera-singing shopkeeper, who got his supplies from the surface. Water he could get from the rooms with the temperature contrast- it would be easy to melt a little ice, then boil the water over a hotcoal until it was clean. He could bring some soft fungus down here to Dead Ringer's room to sleep on. Ladders between levels might even be possible, if he could find enough skeleton-knight lances to steal and enough string to lash them together.

It would be enough to exist on. But it would never, could never, be enough to _live._ Not without Melody. Not without Cadence.

In the weeks that followed, the idea occurred to Dorian that someone else might come along. The crypt might still be an adventuring destination, despite almost everyone worth their salt having heard that it was too hot to handle. Dorian discarded the thought, though. Nobody was that brave, or that stupid. There wasn't much point in hoping for something that would never happen.

Nocturna had been called a lot of things when she left the clan hideout to come investigate this graveyard. The usual things, certainly: foolish, obstreperous, even suicidal. But she'd also been called _young,_ and _untested,_ which she thought was absolute BS. She was no younger than anyone else they sent on investigations, and she'd been practicing her fighting skills for years.

Just because she had no actual field experience didn't mean they should discount her entirely. First time for everything, right?

And besides, it wasn't as if she had a life to risk. None of them did. If there were undead at the graveyard, she'd fit right in. Like as not, she'd be in no danger at all.

Nocturna kicked open the door leading downward. Immediately there was...what? Music? She felt her heart start to pound in her chest, something it hadn't done for as long as she could remember. It felt fundamentally _wrong_ to stand still. Nocturna tapped her foot and let her wings bounce in time - it really was good music - which alleviated some of the feeling, and did a final look over her supplies. Cutlass? Check. Shovel? Check. Emergency explosives? Check. Belt pouch, for if she happened to pick something up on the way? Check.

Nocturna descended the stairs, moving to the unfamiliar rhythm of her own heartbeat. She'd be fine. She was an undead, entering a nest of other undead.

What was the worst that could happen?

 **A/N: Ah, the joys and perils of having more than one fandom...**

 **Prompted (inadvertently) by Bill Nye the Beardy Guy on Steam. I told you I'd write this somewhere other than a comments section! ;)**

 **Crossposted on AO3 (first fic in the fandom there, actually!) as SassyDragon.**


	2. Discovery

p id="docs-internal-guid-4319c338-6f9f-38b3-0e84-36cdf3346f74" dir="ltr"Everything hurt./p  
p dir="ltr" She'd been right about one thing: there were undead down here. There were a emlot/em of undead down here. And they all wanted to destroy Nocturna, pound her into so much dust. It was insane. She was lucky that shopkeeper was there, keeping her in enough food to survive. She'd made the mistake of eating a carrot once; it let her see the entire level, but she almost upchucked afterward. Vampire biology couldn't handle anything but meat, even though the drinking-blood thing was all urban legend./p  
p dir="ltr" Also luckily, she'd found some metal armor in one of the random chests scattered everywhere. It was banged up now, and heavy as hell, but she was pretty sure it was the sole reason she hadn't turned to dust yet. Her heartbeat still rang in her ears, loud, unrelenting. It wouldn't let her rest. If this was how humans felt all the time, no wonder vampires were faster and stronger. It must have been awfully hard for them to get to sleep!/p  
p dir="ltr" Nocturna skewered yet another orc before it had a chance to get its shield around, then turned just in time to strike at a gorgon before it froze her feet in stone. The conduits were nice, but there was all sorts of weird magic down here she'd never seen before, magic she somehow had to learn to deal with before it ended her afterlife. She finished off the last of the skeletons and took stock of her injuries: numerous cuts and scrapes, some tendon or something cut in her left leg by an ankle-biting goblin, a couple electrical burns on top of the scorching from a full-frontal dragon blast a few levels back. That had emhurt./em/p  
p dir="ltr" There was definitely something strange going on here, though. Some of the exit stairs between levels had makeshift ladders hanging from them, especially in the rooms with higher ceilings. Once, when Nocturna had been even more hurt than she was now, she had actually yelled at the shopkeeper to just give her a piece of fucking ham, please, but he'd responded that "the other one" had bought his last a couple days ago. Every bat she talked to mentioned something to that effect as well, but she could never get anything more than "the human" or "the sad-smell one" out of them before they got distracted by a bug or started trying to attack her./p  
p dir="ltr" In any case, it was looking like there might be someone else down here, someone who'd never made it out. That didn't really bode well for Nocturna's own chances, but she stuffed the thought away - no sense worrying about yet another thing when she needed all her brainpower to stay "alive" - and climbed down yet another flight of stairs./p  
p dir="ltr" This one had a ladder at the bottom too. Nocturna, thankful she wouldn't have to screw up her leg even more with another long drop, clambered down it, then spun around, ready for an attack that never came. Good. Usually at the bottoms of stairs she was safe, for a couple beats at least. On closer inspection, the room was clearly the antechamber to a boss fight. Nocturna strained her ears for the music, but...nothing. Her heart went dead, not that this bothered her any./p  
p dir="ltr" A room without music, in this place? Strange./p  
p dir="ltr" Nocturna jogged over to the doors, reveling in her freedom to move whenever she liked. The silence was...eerie. Anywhere else, it would have been comforting, but here it seemed unnatural. Nocturna had the weirdest urge to knock on the doors first, but decided that whatever musicless thing was past here probably wouldn't care, and kicked them in as usual./p  
p dir="ltr" Something yelped. Nocturna had just enough time to process red hair, a green cape, and a huge hammer before the hammer slammed down right where she'd been a millisecond ago. "Hey!" Nocturna shouted automatically, raising her cutlass./p  
p dir="ltr" Whoever-it-was with the hammer stopped short. He lowered his weapon and stared at Nocturna, so intently she wondered whether he'd ever seen a vampire before. It was a man, a human man, with purple splotches all over his skin and armor looking a bit like someone had smashed some bells and a cello and used the pieces to make plate mail. His boots would do something magical. Nocturna wasn't sure what./p  
p dir="ltr" "You...I…" the man stammered./p  
p dir="ltr" Nocturna just stared at him for a moment. On the one hand, it didn't look like he wanted to hurt her anymore. On the other hand, barrels could have teeth and fairies could explode down here, so all bets were off./p  
p dir="ltr" "I...damn, sorry about the welcome," the human sighed after a couple seconds of silence. "I just get jumpy at everything that moves, I think we're on the same side here...actually I really hope we are because I need your help," he continued, in a rush. "It's my daughter...she-"/p  
p dir="ltr" Nocturna blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "I'm sorry to be a total dick but who are you and do you know a way out of this hellhole?!"/p  
p dir="ltr" To his credit, the man didn't even blink at the outburst. "Only way out is to take down the NecroDancer - he's the master of this place, and no, I did not come up with that name and I have no idea who did. My name's Dorian, I'm an adventurer- was an adventurer, before…" He waved a hand at the room in general. Nocturna understood./p  
p dir="ltr" "And then- well…" he went on. "It started with my wife, see, she got sick when Cadence - that's my daughter - was only seven, and died a couple months later. She - she knew about an artifact called the Golden Lute, that apparently her mother had had a while back, but had disappeared trying to get rid of it. It...it had the power to heal the sick. Even to bring the dead back to life." There was a desperate light in Dorian's eyes now. Nocturna wasn't sure if she liked it./p  
p dir="ltr" "After she - Melody, my wife - died, I knew I had to find the Lute. We - we had to be a family again. Cadence had to have a mother again. So I went back to traveling. I adventured every so often. My brother Eli took care of Cadence while I was gone. Not the best arrangement, I admit, but I - I thought it was worth it./p  
p dir="ltr" "And then...well. The Lute was emhere./em I expected it to be difficult to get, but I'd spent ten years searching, I didn't expect it to be emthis/em difficult! I - I made it this far, made it a little further actually, but then the - the NecroDancer, he...I couldn't get it. There were too many of them, too many monsters. He struck me down, I remember that much...but after that it all goes hazy. There was a bell on my head...it's hard to explain, really. It was emhis/em doing, his- his compulsion. I don't know anything I did, I don't know how many people I may have killed…"/p  
p dir="ltr" His shoulders heaved suddenly, and Nocturna realized that he was crying. "You okay?" she asked, but he waved her off./p  
p dir="ltr" "Yes. No. Depends on your point of view, ha ha, either I'm fine or I haven't been fine in...how long has it been?..."/p  
p dir="ltr" He trailed off, lost in thought for a moment. Privately Nocturna thought the latter was more likely true; you couldn't come down here and stay for who-knew-how-long and still be emfine./em/p  
p dir="ltr" "Ah...yes, right, sorry. The only fight I remember-" He stifled another sob. "Sorry. The only fight I remember was my- was my last. It was...I had no idea, but it was…"/p  
p dir="ltr" He couldn't go on. He just stood there, shoulders shaking silently. He looked...old. Broken. Like some of the oldest vampires, the ones who'd been going for so many centuries that nothing could surprise them anymore and their will to live wore away./p  
p dir="ltr" A horrible thought occurred to Nocturna. What if he'd been forced to fight a friend? Hells, what if he'd been forced to fight that brother he mentioned, or even his daughter?/p  
p dir="ltr" ...What if he'd emwon?/em/p  
p dir="ltr"em That would explain the being stuck here,/em she thought. emThat NecroDancer person would probably have brought...whoever it was...back just to taunt him, and he wouldn't be able to kill him or her again. And also why he looks so...run-down. That kind of thing would break anyone./em/p  
p dir="ltr" "I'm sorry," Nocturna said, quietly./p  
p dir="ltr" Dorian wiped his eyes with one cello-plated hand. "Don't be. I'm just an old fool. The biggest old fool this world's ever seen."/p  
p dir="ltr" "Dragonshit. Compulsions are the fucking emworst,/em and that sounds like one of the kind that puts you under, even. There was nothing you could have done. I'm serious."/p  
p dir="ltr" "You weren't there."/p  
p dir="ltr" "Maybe I wasn't, but that doesn't change the fact that emit's not your fault./em Period. End of discussion. What's this?" She'd caught sight of a little pile of things in one corner: a mound of flattened mushrooms, a fire in a ring of stones, a few potion bottles filled with what looked like just water, and-/p  
p dir="ltr" "Is that a chest mimic?!" Nocturna exclaimed. Dorian let out a loud sniff, then walked over to the thing, a little too quickly- glad of the distraction, then./p  
p dir="ltr" "Yes, it is. I call him Fang, for obvious reasons." Dorian knelt down next to the mimic and patted it on the top of the lid. It growled happily and rubbed up against his side, like an affectionate cat./p  
p dir="ltr" "...You actually tamed a chest mimic."/p  
p dir="ltr" Dorian shrugged. "It wasn't hard. Just remember to pet him every time you get close, and he won't so much as nip at you. Doesn't always open when I want him to, but...eh. You can't have everything, I suppose."/p  
p dir="ltr" Nocturna stared some more, then decided she didn't really want to ask. "What do you keep in there?"/p  
p dir="ltr" "Oh, this and that. Spell scrolls, charms, extra explosives, weapons I'm not using but that it seemed a shame to leave for the monsters. No food, as I learned the hard way."/p  
p dir="ltr" "Okay, that's it. You're insane."/p  
p dir="ltr" Dorian chuckled wryly. "So I've been told."/p  
p dir="ltr" He scratched the chest behind the hinges a little more. It really did act like a cat./p  
p dir="ltr" "So...who are you?" Dorian asked./p  
p dir="ltr" "I'm Nocturna. Nocturna pon Kalshrani, but, uh, my name's kinda mud with the clan right now." She got an idea, and went on before she could think better of it, "They say I'm too free-spirited, y'know, 'have you no dignity,' 'get your bat-brained nose out of that right this instant,' blah blah."/p  
p dir="ltr" The idea worked; Dorian burst out laughing. It was the first Nocturna had seen him smile. Smiling, she decided, made him look not quite so old anymore./p  
p dir="ltr" "But seriously, what did you need help with? Getting out? Hate to break it to you, but if you, a career adventurer, couldn't take down the NecroDancer or whoever he is, I doubt I'll be able to. 'Specially since my leg's fucked up and some purple thing smashed me into a wall on...the tenth level counting boss fights, I think it was, and my wing still feels weird when I flap it."/p  
p dir="ltr" "Well, here, first things first." Dorian rummaged in his belt pouch and produced a hunk of cheese, holding it out to Nocturna./p  
p dir="ltr" "You'd really give - ?! Holy freaking emhells,/em thank you so much!" Nocturna snatched the cheese and devoured it, instantly feeling quite a bit better. Her wing righted itself./p  
p dir="ltr" "That's...actually a little terrifying," Dorian commented./p  
p dir="ltr" "Good." Nocturna licked a few stray cheese crumbles off her lips./p  
p dir="ltr" "Now then. I don't need help so much as I need...new ideas. Do you know anything about magical theory?"/p  
p dir="ltr" "I know some. Every vampire gets taught a little- magic's what keeps us alive, or close to it. Bored the shit out of me, but I remember a lot of it for some reason. What did you want to know?"/p  
p dir="ltr" "There's a…" Dorian paused, choosing his words carefully. "There's...it's not exactly a boss fight, but the mechanic is similar. Stairs are locked, you have to defeat the...boss-ish person...before you can use them. Do you think it would be possible to...defeat the boss without killing her- I mean, without killing it?"/p  
p dir="ltr" Nocturna frowned. "I dunno. Depends on how specific the spell is. On the one hand, yeah you absolutely had to kill the miniboss to get past a level in the entire rest of this place. On the other hand, look at, uh, Fang. If getting a chest mimic to act like a kitten and store your stuff doesn't count as a defeat, I don't know what does."/p  
p dir="ltr" "How would you do a non-kill defeat for this, then?"/p  
p dir="ltr" "Again, dunno. I'd have to see it- you called it a her, right?"/p  
p dir="ltr" Dorian winced. The smile vanished instantly./p  
p dir="ltr" "Okay, sticky subject. Moving on. Can I go see her?"/p  
p dir="ltr" He pointed at the other end of the room, now looking just as morose as when she'd first seen him. "Whatever you do, do not strike her. Please. It's very important to me."/p  
p dir="ltr" "...Alright?" Nocturna walked over to the stairs and gazed down them as far as she could see. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. She walked down, took a moment to adjust to the returned music, then spread her wings - tight fit, she might have a little issue getting up later - and glided down into the room./p  
p dir="ltr" It was the smallest boss fight room she'd ever seen. There were the bones of a few skeletons on the floor, but Nocturna had learned to tune those out long ago. And honestly, who would call this a boss? It was a human lady, a good deal younger than Dorian if Nocturna had to guess. Her skin was pale and splotchy like his, though, she looked even more badly injured than Nocturna, and her eyes glowed an unsettling purple. She moved in the same beat-pattern as a skeleton, her only weapon a dagger with too many nicks and scratches to be all that useful./p  
p dir="ltr" "I wonder why Dorian wants you alive," Nocturna pondered aloud. "Is it just because you're...what remains of a human, like him?"/p  
p dir="ltr" She didn't reply. Nocturna noticed, offhand, that she and Dorian had the same high cheekbones, the same pointed chin, though his was more pronounced-/p  
p dir="ltr" emOh no./em/p  
p dir="ltr" There was the slightest trace of red in her unkempt blonde hair./p  
p dir="ltr" emOh no. Oh fuck no. I was right. This must be her. This must be Cadence. It's the only explanation./em/p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr" /p  
p dir="ltr" When Nocturna returned from Cadence's room, she looked shaken. Her wings were pressed tight against her back, and Dorian could swear her hands were trembling slightly. He immediately feared the worst - had an accident happened? - but before he could ask, she said in the least shouty voice he'd heard from her yet, "She's fine. Well, ha, no, she's not, but I didn't do anything to her."/p  
p dir="ltr"Nocturna took a deep, shaky breath. Did she usually breathe? Dorian wasn't sure, and now was not the time to dwell on it./p  
p dir="ltr""The bad news is, I think I know what happened, and now I kind of want to throw up. All over that sadistic piece of shit NecroDancer if possible, because nobody deserves this. emNobody,/em Dorian," she said, when it looked like he was about to argue. "Nobody, and definitely not you."/p  
p dir="ltr""The good news is, I also think I have a plan."/p 


End file.
